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To be an effective leader in Prime America, you need to lead by example and do what you ask your team to do. Your personal success will be persuasive and attract others to join. Recruit and train new members regularly to remove any excuses for your team. Focus on personal growth and set goals to surpass previous achievements. Show a positive attitude and react optimistically to challenges. Attend all meetings and be committed. Be the perfect recruit and have a clear vision of where you want to go. Set income goals and always strive to exceed them. Be disciplined, focused, and have great people skills. Care about the success and well-being of your team and recognize and encourage their progress. I'm going to talk to you about the keys to being an effective leader in Prime America. Well, the first thing is you need to always do what you're going to ask your people to do first. You've got to be doing it first. If you're going to ask them to recruit, you've got to recruit. If you're going to ask them to bring people to the meetings, you've got to bring people. If you're going to ask them to close business, you need to close business. If you're going to ask them to have a great attitude, you need to have a great attitude. If you're going to ask them to personally develop, you need to personally develop. You've got to do it first. Number two, your personal example in Prime America is your most persuasive tool. If they see you winning and doing all the right things, you're not going to have any problem persuading anybody to do it because they're going to see you making money. They're going to see you growing. They're going to see you creating excitement. They're going to want to be part of that. Number three, you need to recruit and field train directs every month. You need to take all the excuses away from everybody on your team. That was one of the things I always focused on. I focused on every month doing the prospecting, getting on the appointments, closing sales, recruiting people. My goal was every month to be number one in the base shop. I was intent on taking away everyone's excuse every month. I didn't want anybody to ever come up to me and say, Hector, this is too hard. I would just be able to say, listen, I recruited six people last month. I closed $12,000 in premium. I did this or I did that. You want to be able to do that. You want to make and save money. The great leaders, what they do is they make money and they save money. They're really sound financially. You want to show them that it's easy to make money and saving money is how you get the financial independence. You need to focus on growing every month. One of the things that a great leader of any business focuses on is growing that business, doing more production this year over last year. One of the things I would do is every month, I still do it today, I did it then. I would look at what did I do last year this month, what were the numbers, and then I would set a goal to beat those numbers. I would focus on that. I'd put those numbers on my visor in my car. I'd put them where I got ready in the morning in my bathroom mirror. I'd put them everywhere. I'd put them everywhere. I'd put them in my planner. Everywhere I could look, I was looking at those numbers and what I had to do, what my goals were to beat last year's numbers. You got to always grow. You need to earn your promotions. They got to see you getting promoted. They got to see you going from district to division to regional leader to RVP, from RVP to SVP, from SVP to NSD to NSD to SNSD. They got to see you growing and getting moving and getting promoted. The way you do that is through leadership. You do it through leadership. You need to post big numbers. You need to keep raising the bar for what's possible. My goal every month when the month started was to recruit three directs and recruit another six or seven or eight people for the people I was training and to do at least 10 to 20 life insurance transactions. That was always my goal for years. From 1984 until I got out of the field, about 1991 or 92 is when I totally got out of the field. That's what I focused on every month. Have the absolute best attitude. You need to react to disappointment and challenges super optimistically. They've got to see you always looking ahead, always looking forward. They can't see you with your head down, being depressed, complaining, being negative. They've got to see you having an amazing attitude regardless of what happens, no matter what's going on. My image of this was being in a room, all the walls crumbling down and me being totally excited about where I was going. Just always, always excited, always optimistic. It may sound Pollyanna, but I'm telling you, man, if you show hurt, if you show disappointment, if you show any negativity, your ability to lead people is compromised and you have no chance of getting this thing going. Never miss any meetings. You can't be a leader and then miss meetings. If you've got a team, you're selling them on this dream and you have meetings and they show up and you're not there, you can't be a leader. What you're saying to them when you're not there is, it's not important. I don't have any discipline. I'm not committed. Well, no one's going to follow somebody that's not committed and is not serious. You're not going to get people to go full time if they're showing up to meetings and you're not there. That's not going to happen. You've got to be at those meetings. That's part of being a leader. You have to focus on being the perfect recruit. You know, in order for people to follow you, I thought about me being the perfect recruit. I just had an image. What would the perfect recruit be? Man, they would never miss a meeting. They would read all the books. They would listen to all the tapes. They would be bringing new people to the meetings all the time. They would be writing a bunch of sales. They would be recruiting people every month. They would be growing. They would be making money. They would be having fun. They would have a great attitude. They would be very coachable. What's the perfect recruit look like? You need to be the perfect recruit before you can expect them to be the perfect recruit, right? Before you expect to attract the perfect recruit, you've got to be that. You know what the perfect recruit looks like. You've got to make a decision, a conscious decision and a commitment to be the perfect recruit all the time. You know, you need to have a very specific, clear vision of where you're going with Prime America. That's what leaders have. They know exactly where they're going and they're painting that picture for their team all the time. Leaders know exactly where they're headed with their Prime America business. I knew exactly where I was going and what I was trying to accomplish and I never looked right. I never looked left. I never looked up or I never looked down. I kept looking straight ahead no matter what was happening in the company, no matter what was happening in my personal life. I never lost my focus of where I was trying to go. Does that mean everything went perfect all the time? Of course not. I had all kinds of problems. I made a lot of mistakes. Things didn't go well all the time, but I never let anybody see me looking anywhere but where I was trying to go. I was becoming an RVP, making $100,000 a year, then becoming an SVP, an NSD, and an SNSD. Just growing this thing. I knew where I was going and people knew that I knew where I was going. Even if they didn't know, they knew I was going somewhere, so they wanted to tag on. You need to know how big you want to get. You need to know what kind of income you want to make. You've got to always have a goal, an income goal, and a growing income goal. My first year, I made $18,000. My goal was to make $25,000. The second year, I made $35,000. My goal was to make $50,000. I told everybody, listen to me, I was going to make $50,000, I was going to make $35,000. The next year, I had a goal to make $100,000. I would tell everybody, look, I want to make $100,000, I'm going to make $100,000. I made $86,000. I was focused on making $100,000, but I made $86,000. The next year, I had so much momentum, I jumped that up from $100,000 to $500,000. I said, I'm going to make $500,000 this year. You know what? I made $409,000. Then the next year, I said, you know, if I could do that, I could at least double that, right? I'm going to make $1 million this year. I told everybody on my team, everybody that was listening, I was going to make $1 million. I made $855,000. I always knew exactly what I was trying to make and had a goal. I never hit an income goal in my life, but usually by the next year, I blew past the goal that I had the year previously. You've got to have some kind of goal of where you're going there. I think you need to be the most disciplined and focused person in your business. You've got to be known as being focused and disciplined. One of the things that I'm known for in Primerica, I am a disciplined, focused human being. As far as everybody knows, that's what I am. I tell you, that's what people want as a leader, somebody that's focused and disciplined, that they can count on, they know who's going to be there, that's going to show up, that's going to bring value, and is going to get results, and is going to lead them to where they want to go. You have to have great people skills. One of the things that's super important is that all great leaders love and care about their people. They care about the well-being and the success of their people. They really, really do. It's not something they just say. They show it in everything they do. They work so hard at teaching, at bringing value, at making people feel special, at trying to offer the most valuable information and training available to give their people the best chance to succeed. They really, truly care about their people winning. That's true in the military. That's true in every business. That's true in sports. The greatest leaders care the most about their people, and the success of their people, and the well-being of their people. Part of that caring, by the way, is expecting more from your people than they expect from themselves. It means believing in them more than they do in themselves. It means giving them your belief constantly until they develop the self-confidence to believe in themselves. You need to look for every reason to encourage and recognize your people. Look for every shred of behavior that moves them in the right direction, and recognize it and praise it because if they're showing the right behavior, you want them to repeat that behavior. Constantly reinforce their strong points and help them see how great they are and how much potential they have. Constantly help them improve their weaknesses so they eventually become strong points. You know what your people's weaknesses are, right? They're not closing. They're not good at setting appointments. Whatever it is. Maybe they're not very good at presenting, or they're not good at whatever. Whatever that is. Shore up their weaknesses. Help them get better. Help them turn their weaknesses into strengths. Recognize constantly. You've got to constantly recognize people. You've got to look for every reason to recognize somebody. You can do it through Go Solo. You can make a phone call and just say, Hey, John, you are doing an awesome job. I'm so proud of you. I'm so excited to be in business with you. Your tenacity, your focus, your persistence is just incredible. Write them notes. I love being in business with you. You're going to be a superstar. You're going to be our next great RVP. I know that you've got what it takes to win big. Stay focused. Boost them up in front of their peers when they're doing a great job. In the lobby of the office and there's a bunch of people hanging out and somebody that's doing a great job walks up and you go, Hey, Martin, you are awesome, dude. You are kicking butt. You are blowing by these people like they're standing still. You obviously want it more than everybody else. Man, I am super proud of what you're doing right now. Every meeting you need to be doing recognition. You've got to be looking for people doing things right and recognize it. You've got to master making people feel special. Art Williams, the founder of our company, said that people had a big neon sign under their chest, flashing right under their chest, and it said, Make me feel special. Make me feel like I'm somebody. When I heard that, I went, You know, that's really true, man. That is really true. I've practiced doing that with everyone I've come into contact with for over 22 years now. It's helped me make my life so much better. I can't even tell you how much better my life is because I've practiced that. I've had countless examples of people who've helped me, who want to help me because of how I treated them and how I made them feel. It's just amazing how powerful that is. People will gladly help you if you recognize their specialness. If you want to move and motivate people to do their best, which is what leadership is, you need to do all these things, you guys. People want to be around and close to a leader who knows where they're going and who believes in them and cares about their success more than anyone they've ever met. Make sure that person's you. Another thing as a leader you need to do, you need to live below your means. Always focus on what you want, but plan for the worst. You should never have a money problem in Prime Miracle. You should be slow to expand your overhead, you know. Really be careful about expanding your overhead. Don't succumb to the pressure to buy an expensive car or a home until it represents a very small percentage of your income. I didn't buy an expensive home until I'd saved a million dollars in cash. My income was over $800,000 a year. I live in an 1,800 square foot track home with a house paying $1,200 a month and I was making $70,000, $80,000, $90,000 a month. I was really, really slow to expand. Even when I did buy a really nice house, that house was about $550,000, but I had already saved a million and I was making $80,000 a month. My house payment was at that time maybe $3,500, $4,000 a month and it was such an inconsequential part of my income, it didn't matter and it didn't make me nervous and I didn't stress about it. It was nothing. My income could have been dropped in half and it wouldn't have had any impact at all on how I lived. That's the way you need to operate. Remember, the ultimate goal is financial independence. That needs to come before anything else. You can't ever be truly free until you have enough money invested that the income it generates pays for your standard of living. That's true freedom, freedom you can attain here at Prime America. I've done it and lots of other people have done it too. Training people correctly is part of great leadership as well. When training someone, it's critical that you clearly explain how you get the results you get so you're certain they get it and can duplicate it as well, just like you do. You're training somebody after every training appointment, you should recap what happened during the appointment to your trainee so they completely and totally understand everything you did, why you said what you said, why you did what you did. The clearer you are in teaching what you do on appointments, the better trained and the more likely they are to succeed. How you test whether you're being clear in your training is by the results your people have when they begin going out on appointments by themselves. If they get fantastic results, they start recruiting people, they start closing sales like crazy, they make money and they're growing, you've done a great job, you've been very clear teaching. If they go out and they struggle, you didn't do a good job teaching them. They didn't really learn what they needed to learn and that's your fault. By the way, when thinking about promoting someone to regional vice president, if they don't have several people under them who can successfully train and develop people on their own, they have absolutely no business being promoted to regional vice president whatsoever. That's a recipe for disaster.
